The setting is an old, somewhat decaying country/suburban house with unkempt grounds where Father, Mother, Daughter and Son live, the last mostly confined to his room for unspecified illnesses. The interior is dark, with furniture of former bourgeois luxury. Most of the action happens around the dinner table, with vases, jars and fruits lighted artificially as in the still lives of old masters. The family seems uncomfortable in this world: conversations are strained, repetitive and sometimes meaningless, past choices are lamented, objects are endlessly rearranged, incestuous thoughts and fantasies are entertained, food is consumed without enjoyment and forks and knives are interminably rattled against plates and cups.
The movie evolves midway into a series of flashbacks which may or may not be real, involving the family years ago, with childhood versions of Daughter and Son. The flashbacks may be meant to cast light on the family's present predicament, in particular of Son's ills. The film ends with a striking scene where a family next door that has been disparaged by Father at the beginning is shown in a light that evolves from the gloomy to the luminous and cheerful, and we hear the dialogue in the first scene.
The subject is similar to that of the 2007 Lech Majewski's film Glass Lips, where there is a troubled family and the woes of a son are nonlinearly revealed (or hinted at) in flashbacks. In Glass Lips you get from the flashbacks a set of points that can be connected, perhaps in more than one way. In Las Meninas the points are too few and far between and we are reduced to a general feeling of discomfort about the family past, where manipulation, hatred, and incestuous feelings were always present. Why is this film called Las Meninas? Perhaps because Velásquez's canvas challenges our perception of reality with mirror reflections. There are endless reflections in this film, sometimes double and triple, and mirrors that reflect what is not there. Director Ihor Podolchak, a Lviv-based artist and painter codirected with Dean Karr, photographer and video director. They also provided music for part of the film. Despite the objections, this his a film worth watching; perhaps the viewing should center on feelings and visuals.
The movie evolves midway into a series of flashbacks which may or may not be real, involving the family years ago, with childhood versions of Daughter and Son. The flashbacks may be meant to cast light on the family's present predicament, in particular of Son's ills. The film ends with a striking scene where a family next door that has been disparaged by Father at the beginning is shown in a light that evolves from the gloomy to the luminous and cheerful, and we hear the dialogue in the first scene.
The subject is similar to that of the 2007 Lech Majewski's film Glass Lips, where there is a troubled family and the woes of a son are nonlinearly revealed (or hinted at) in flashbacks. In Glass Lips you get from the flashbacks a set of points that can be connected, perhaps in more than one way. In Las Meninas the points are too few and far between and we are reduced to a general feeling of discomfort about the family past, where manipulation, hatred, and incestuous feelings were always present. Why is this film called Las Meninas? Perhaps because Velásquez's canvas challenges our perception of reality with mirror reflections. There are endless reflections in this film, sometimes double and triple, and mirrors that reflect what is not there. Director Ihor Podolchak, a Lviv-based artist and painter codirected with Dean Karr, photographer and video director. They also provided music for part of the film. Despite the objections, this his a film worth watching; perhaps the viewing should center on feelings and visuals.
